Operation Bighorn : DFG Moves Ambitiously to Relocate Desert Sheep to Their Historic Ranges

The helicopter, buffeted by gusts, descends on its prey, precariously close to the rugged slopes of Old Dad Peak in the Eastern Mojave Desert. A man leans out the open hatch, bracing himself with one foot on a skid, and aims a strange sort of gun.

Below, a Nelson desert bighorn sheep scampers through rocks and sage, trying to escape the predator from the sky. Fifty feet, 40, 30, 20-- POW! A 10-foot-square net explodes from a .308 blank cartridge and entangles the animal.

The helicopter pilot steadies one skid on a rock as a “mugger” steps off, pulls a shroud over the sheep’s eyes, hobbles its legs with leather straps, stuffs it into a yellow bag and sends it aloft.

For all the sheep knows, it has been captured by aliens from another planet--destination and fate unknown. It will never understand the select role it is playing in the future of the species.

The exercise was repeated 44 times over 3 1/2 days of the California Department of Fish and Game’s most ambitious project to relocate bighorns in historic ranges of the state.

The sheep were moved south into the Bullion and Bristol mountains, the latter within the boundaries of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center near Twentynine Palms. Each of those areas received 15 ewes and five young rams. The Sheephole Mountains got four young rams to augment a population that has doubled since it was established with 27 animals in 1984.

Said Vern Bleich, the DFG wildlife biologist overseeing the project: “Sheep are apparently slow to colonize in vacant habitat (and) have been eliminated from numerous mountain ranges in California. Part of what we’re doing here is to, in a sense, make amends for the human errors of the past . . . perhaps uncontrolled hunting during the Gold Rush, perhaps diseases that were introduced as a result of human beings, perhaps the usurpation of water sources.”

Bleich describes the Bullions and Bristols as the “missing link” between Old Dad Peak, the Granite Mountains and the isolated Cady Mountains to the west. With the links connected, the sheep will have a continuous string of habitat throughout the desert.

The DFG started relocating sheep in 1982, mainly from Old Dad and the Marble Mountains to the southeast. From about 3,700 bighorns when they were first surveyed in the early ‘70s, there are now about 4,700 in the state, including 300 at Old Dad.

That’s according to the most recent census by dedicated people, such as volunteers recruited by the Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep, who spend scorching summer days counting the animals as they come to watering holes or the artificial guzzlers the volunteers have built to collect and hold water for desert wildlife.

The numbers at Old Dad have been reduced by previous relocation efforts and, to a much lesser degree, by limited hunts of a dozen or fewer older rams taken each winter. The revenue from the hunts--the special-auction tag this year sold for $61,000--directly pays for the program, a fact not necessarily appreciated by the animal rights groups that have harassed the hunters most years.

The hiring of two helicopters alone cost almost $500 each per hour, or $24,150 for the operation. The nearby Viceroy Gold Mine Corp. kicked in $15,000, a group of five Safari Clubs International $2,500 and a hunter from Chicago paid $2,000 just to hang out and watch as a “wildlife experience.”

Bleich figures relocating one sheep costs $2,257. That makes this a $100,000 operation. Six of the state’s 61 population groups didn’t exist in 1982. After this operation there will be two more.

Old Dad has produced 46 rams and 126 ewes for past relocations. Old Dad seems to have plenty to spare--more than it can handle, really, in this sparse habitat where water and forage are as scarce as a merciful sun.

“This population seems to respond very well,” Bleich said. “You knock the population down (and) it appears that lamb recruitment increases.”

Dispersing the bighorns ensures the species. Concentrations would eat themselves out of habitat and be subject to catastrophic attrition from disease.

In the past, when the methodology was new, some sheep were lost, but more than 96% have survived.

“Of the 361 we have captured for translocation, 346 were released alive,” Bleich said before the recent operation.

There also was a human cost. During a survey in 1986, pilot Don Landells and biologist Jim Bicket of the Bureau of Land Management were killed in a helicopter crash that also severely injured Bleich’s former colleague, Dick Weaver. Landells’ company, based in Desert Hot Springs, still flies for the DFG. The pilots are Steve DeJesus and Brian Watts, whose skills were tested in the rugged, gusty canyons, but the worst injuries suffered by any of the 60 members of the crew on this project were scratches and bruises from wrestling the sheep.

Of 45 sheep captured, one died of a broken neck suffered in the chase. That meant only four rams instead of the scheduled five joined the others in the Sheepholes.

The bighorn sheep program might be the DFG’s best success story. It is considered so important that the new director, Boyd Gibbons, spent the first two days at the base camp, where the animals were ear-tagged, weighed, measured, treated for injuries or illnesses and given physical examinations before being trucked to their new homes.

By the end of the first day--which happened to be Election Day--Gibbons was no longer just an observer but was flying capture missions, taking fecal samples and attaching radio collars so the animals’ movements can be tracked over the next few years.

One DFG employee, Rocky Thompson of Needles, marveled, “I’ve worked for two (fish and game) directors in two states, and this is the first time I’ve seen one dig for fecal samples.”

Base camp, located under a large, khaki, war-surplus cargo parachute, simulated the opening scenes from “MASH”--choppers coming over the distant, dusky hills, attendants rushing out to pick up the patients, an urgent and efficient triage to check for signs of dangerous stress and then the processing, which took 20 to 30 minutes per animal.

In earlier operations, the animals were shot with tranquilizers. Then the scientists realized that drugging compounded the stress because it inhibited the animals’ ability to release body heat. Now, once blindfolded, the young bighorns, which weigh up to 150 pounds, generally behave like--well, sheep and settle into the routine.

Before sending the captured animals aloft, the muggers scribble an ID number on one horn alongside a happy face or a frowning face--a quick sign for the veterinarians at base camp to indicate whether the animal seems stable or requires special attention.

While vets test and treat an animal, others affix a radio collar to track its future movements, all the while monitoring its temperature and respiration. Blood samples are taken. Water is poured on sheep that are overheated. An animal suffering unusual stress might get an IV. One requires on-the-spot surgery to repair a puncture wound in his side suffered in the chase.

The attendants check teeth and pick ticks out of ears. Most of the animals are in good health. Mark Drew of the DFG’s Wildlife Investigations lab in Rancho Cordova uses a portable ultrasound unit to determine that 70% of the ewes are pregnant--a good sign.

“Two for the price of one,” Bleich says. “Animals that are in very poor condition are less apt to reproduce successfully.”

The night before the operation starts, Bill Clark, in charge of the capture phase for the DFG, briefs the crew. Some are experts but many are volunteers from the Sheep Society, the Marines and the UC Davis veterinary school.

“Our whole point here is to have healthy, minimally stressed animals to start new herds,” Clark tells them. “Capturing carcasses is a waste of time. When those animals are in here I want people to be quiet. Noise is a stress-inducer.”

Clark calls the stress syndrome “capture myopathy.”

Bleich adds, “Oh-five-thirty, (be) ready to go. We want to come in low and fast out of the east, with the sun in their eyes.”

A cold, northeast wind is blowing when the helicopters lift off at 6:04 a.m. Under the canopy there is the smell of coffee and a spirit of mobilization. Twenty minutes later one chopper radios that it is returning with the first capture. The day is off to a good start.

But as the morning progresses, the wind builds to 30 m.p.h. and the choppers are having trouble getting to the sheep.

“It’s on the verge of not being able to do it,” Clark says. “The sheep are getting in the steep-sided washes and won’t come out, and because of the wind we can’t get close enough to flush them out.”

He tells one of the choppers to fire harmless but noisy “cracker” shells near the sheep to scare them into the open.

By mid-afternoon, when the chopper pilots have exhausted their seven hours of daily flying time permitted by the FAA, there have been 11 ewes and three rams--one below the daily quota--sent off to another range.

In several cases, ewes are separated from their lambs, but John Wehausen isn’t concerned about breaking up families. As a University of California wildlife biologist under contract to the DFG for research in the White Mountains east of the Owens Valley, he has studied bighorn behavior for years.

“There are home-range patterns, but it’s not a family structure,” Wehausen says. “Some lambs may be with their mothers for a while after (weaning), but a lot of lambs are running around with other mothers, so you’re not really disrupting them.”

The next day dawns still, but Clark expects the sheep to be harder to find after having been harassed the previous day. The helicopters are off late, at 6:25, after the sun has already jumped over the Kelso Mountains. By 7:05, there is one capture, but it’s an older ram.

“We’ve got one sheep and it’s one we don’t need,” Bleich says, glumly.

Then, at 8:50, a chopper returns with three in one load, including a yearling ram born in the spring of ’91.

“That’s what we want,” Bleich says.

The capture crews are trying to collect the proper ratio of ewes to rams. At 2:05, spirits soar when DeJesus radios he is returning with Old Dad No. 200, a handsome, 134-pound, 4-year-old ram.

Bob Teagle, who doubles as a net-gunner and a mugger, describes the capture: “It was a short chase, although he did some fancy running . . . jumped right over a huge open mine shaft. Then he went down into an open area and I net-gunned him. He was real special.”

Someone has prepared a small banner to commemorate the capture. Photos are taken. The ram has no clue as to his notoriety but seems to take it in stride.

His prize: a free trip to the Sheepholes, one way.

By the end of Day 2, seven more ewes and eight more rams have been trucked out over the rough, wilderness roads. Four more are rounded up on the third day, a fifth on the fourth day--one under the overall quota but a successful operation nevertheless.

Gibbons is pleased. He is fulfilling his pledge to be an out-and-about, hands-on director of the DFG.

“I like to get into the field to see what the department is doing,” he says. “I get to meet the people on the ground. You don’t get that sitting in an office in Sacramento.”

Bleich is pleased.

“We’re restoring a function of the ecosystem that existed two or three hundred years ago,” he says. “We’re obligated. We played a role in creating the situation.”

And what about the bighorn sheep? Along with its intelligence and instinct for surviving in a harsh environment, the serene creature possesses the dignity of a gentle monarch. Outlined on a ridge against the sky, it’s a sentinel for the future of wildlife, a reassurance that things will be all right out there, if man just does the right thing.